Bad Boys. Doctor Love. Good Intentions. Then there’s Uh Oh, with a tilted martini glass shoehorned between the words of this expression of dismay.

Whatever the reason the yachts at Long Beach Shoreline Marina get painted with these names, the owners all get 360-degree panoramic views of the idyllic seaport every day.

The Queen Mary looms on its southern horizon, the hillsides of Palos Verdes to the west, the Long Beach skyline of condos and office towers of Ocean Boulevard to the north and the wealthy, Mediterranean-style bungalows of Belmont Shore and Naples to the east.

More than 300 live-aboards are estimated to live year-round in Long Beach’s three municipally owned marinas – the largest marina complex in the United States, says Elvira Hallinan, interim manager of the Long Beach Marine Bureau, which is tasked with running them all.

Some 8.35 percent of the 3,615 slips in Long Beach’s marinas have people living on moored yachts, which must be at least 30 feet in length, Hallinan says. As a rule, the three marinas permit up to 10 percent to be live-aboards. Those who fly under the radar and don’t pay are referred to as “sneak-aboards.”

If you live on a yacht more than three days a week, then a live-aboard fee must be paid. But no one has come up with a surefire way of catching them, Hallinan says.

Live-aboards in Shoreline Marina come from many walks of life. Some tell sad tales of divorce, financial problems, failing health and trading in homes in gated communities in Orange County or Palos Verdes Estates for condos on the water.

On a Saturday evening two weeks ago, Shoreline Marina staged its annual Parade of 1,000 Lights, a Christmas boat parade that flies under the radar of the Naples Island holiday parade and the over-the-top Newport Beach affair farther south. This year’s Shoreline Marina parade was the biggest since before the Great Recession and attracted nearly three dozen yachts rigged with blinking lights, lighted reindeers, igloos, snowmen and Santa Clauses, says Steve Harvey, who owns the Vitamin Sea yacht.

Bystanders stood or brought lawn chairs to catch a glimpse of the parade, which navigated out of the marina between Grissom Island and the end of East Shoreline Drive.

“This was the biggest parade in recent years,” says Harvey, who helped organize the parade, which was sponsored by the Shoreline Yacht Club and others.

“Merry Christmas, Grandpa!” yells a girl from one of the decorated boats to a small crowd at the end of Shoreline. Some belted out “Jingle Bells” as they passed by; another wannabe crooner on land sang “Ho ho ho and a barrel of rum.” Robert Sterling of Newport Beach dressed up in a Santa Claus suit – his third year volunteering.

Shoreline Marina has attracted a tight-knit group of live-aboards. Over on Dock I, Slip 34, there’s a 45-footer called Sammy Boy.

Jeff Bundy, 52, named his yacht after his grandson, Sammy, who died of fibroblastoma cancer, and his 21-year son, Brian, whom he had fondly nicknamed “Boy.” Brian was “murdered by a drunk driver,” Bundy says.

Inside his teak-paneled boat, Bundy keeps a few photos of Brian. One has him sitting in a P-51 Mustang.

Bundy works about 15 miles away at Gardena-based Aero Arc Inc., where he welds ductwork and tubing for commercial and military planes. He talks about how he wants to sprinkle a pinch of his son’s ashes in the same P-51, eight years after his death.

“I miss everybody, every day,” Bundy says of his son and grandson.

For $827.95 a month, Bundy gets a slip, water, electricity, garbage service and a private parking spot. Showers and laundry can be done on the boat or in buildings just outside some of the gangways.

Bundy doesn’t venture very far inland. He pays $30 a month to Super Suds Laundromat & Fluff and Fold over on Alamitos Avenue, which washes everything from underwear to bed sheets and folds them. He places the neat piles of clothing in his yacht’s station room.

Bundy, like other live-aboards, shops at either the Vons on East Broadway or the Albertsons on Long Beach Boulevard a few blocks away. Sometimes he unhooks his beach cruiser bicycle, which is powered by a 66cc combustion engine, and rides over to Parker’s Lighthouse or one of the other restaurants in Shoreline Village to grab takeout.

Occasionally, he jumps in a small boat he has tied up to one of the slips and goes fishing for barracuda, calico, halibut and sand bass. His pit bull, Leo, chases cranes.

When he rolls out of bed in the forward berth of his yacht, he scoots forward to crawl off a foam mattress where he has comfortably slept since he moved onto the boat a decade ago. His morning ritual involves stepping down from the ship and leaning over the edge of the dock and whistling for Lightnin’, a bird that swims over to eat his favorite food, a Waverly cracker.

“This is my backyard,” Bundy says.

When storms creep up in the marina, he’ll go around the gangways looking for unfurled sails or loose yacht ropes and mooring lines and make sure nothing gets damaged or blows away.

It’s hard not to stereotype live-aboards.

You’ll hear stories of divorce, partying or traveling around the marina in a tiny dinghy to the “quiet side,” over to the Shoreline Yacht Club for a beverage or dinner.

Back in the late 1990s, Michael Schachter, 66, traded his 3,000-square-foot home in the ritzy Orange Park Acres in Orange for a 53-foot Pilothouse Motor Yacht moored at Dock C, Slip 7.

“The boat is always fueled and ready to go,” says Schachter, who manages real estate properties. He has sailed out to Catalina Island more times than he can count. He sometimes walks or travels over to his office in the Villa Riviera building at 800 E. Ocean Blvd.

“I have a minimalistic approach to life,” says Schachter, whose boat has memories filled with his parents, who were heavily influenced by Tahiti. In fact, his boat is named Maita’I Roa, which loosely translated in Tahitian means “really good or excellent.”

He keeps an L.M. Chan artwork depicting two Go masters playing the chess-like board game as a centerpiece in the boat’s main living area. It’s made out of leather and has held up well in the salty ocean air.

Schachter, like other live-aboards, has a refrigerator, stove and other comforts.

The live-aboards don’t punch a code into a keypad or swipe a magnetic card to gain access to their gangways. Instead, to keep unwanted visitors from showing up, there are turnstile-looking gates where a key is needed to gain entry. To get out, no key is needed, but you have to reach inside a foot-long metal tube to turn the knob. It’s designed so people on the outside can’t reach around the chain-link fence to open the door.

Live-aboards can use restrooms outside the gangways where they can take a shower or do laundry. The bathrooms resemble something like what you might see at a campground, with blue-waffled rubber matting on the shower floors.

On one warm evening, live-aboard Dave Kincaid serenades girlfriend Kelli Erskine with his guitar while they wait for three loads of laundry to dry.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.